A blog about History and Life Observations

Month: January 2020

JD

On a recent flight from Palm Springs, California to home in Portland, Oregon I viewed the 2012 movie Chasing Mavericks and was reminded of an old friend I actually think of quite often, though regrettably, I haven’t seen him in many years. The movie, which tells the story of a teenage Jay Moriarity (died one day shy of 23) and his quest to surf the giant waves that occasionally break in this now legendary spot near Santa Cruz, just north of Half Moon Bay in Northern California, brought me back to the days of my own very short lived experience as a novice “surfer” growing up in Del Mar, California (after a move in 7th grade from Hillcrest near San Diego proper). While my career as a “surfer” was quite short, for my friend JD it became a passion I suppose, and possibly, the 10,000-hour rule worked its magic (theory that you can master anything that you practice for 10,000 hours). However, I believe what ultimately made JD a great surfer and yours truly a pretty dreadful surfer can really be summed up with one word. JD was one of the most fearless people I have ever known. And, one of the most interesting…

Growing up in Southern California during my high school years, I mostly knew three types of kids. Athletes were by far the largest subset in the group of three. I also associated with a fair amount of kids for whom surfing was a passion and a way of life, long before that became a marketable, mainstream thing (even for people who wouldn’t know a surfboard from a paddleboard); these guys, however, were the real deal. The third group was composed of recreational drug users (OK stoners) for whom this became a lifestyle (think Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High fame). Marijuana was the drug of choice for most, yet alcohol, cocaine, and psychedelic mushrooms were certainly part of the mix in a descending order of usage. The really interesting part… These distinct groups dabbled in or in fact prioritized somewhat equally one or even all of the identity choices. For example, some of the best athletes I knew were also great surfers who smoked lots of pot. And, most definitely, many of the kids I grew up with at this time, fell strongly into two of the categories. There were a few “one category guys,” yet this was actually rare. One of my very best friends to this day, Scottie W, was a one category guy and a truly great basketball player but had no interest in drugs or surfing. As I reminisce on these days, I am reminded of the need to tell any of my 40 and under readers just how incredibly different (and in my humble opinion) better life was before the advent of the Social Media / Technology Overload world that has become the New Normal. A subject for another day, yet suffice it to say that I feel incredibly blessed to have been young and adventurous in those halcyon days of the mid 70’s to early 80’s. Life was blissfully simple though I can only fully understand this through the hindsight lens of the year 2020 and close to 57 years on the planet. At the time, we couldn’t have imagined the ways in which life’s pace would accelerate. Wouldn’t trade the experience for the world…  

I first met JD during the summer after my sophomore year of high school.  He and his family had moved from a palatial home in Virginia to the then modest coastal town of Solana Beach (not so modest now). According to JD (pretty circumspect, reticent guy), his former place had an indoor wood tiled basketball court, a large swimming pool, and lots of special amenities. As a kid you really don’t think of all the details of adult life with its financial highs and lows which are simply a part of the human experience for most of us. Unbelievably, from the context of then versus now, the move was a massive scale down for the family (North County San Diego was the sleepy sticks in those days). JD’s father was an entrepreneur type from my recollections, and I recall that he had invented a number of board games for Milton Bradley and had made a lot of money, yet something must have happened to precipitate the move. Needless to say, JD fit in nicely as he could certainly check off two of the boxes as he was a great athlete who loved basketball and marijuana with equal fervor. Surfing would come later of course…

At about this time, basketball was a huge part of life. Without going into all of the details and machinations of this topic (of which there were many), suffice it to say that for my core group of friends, basketball was life. We ate, slept, and drank basketball and we often played for hours on end. Though we played in many different places and in many different levels of structured organization from the playground to high school teams, I was lucky enough to be the kid who had a really nice court at his house (built on a tennis court no less). We spent many hours on that court doing battle and it was great.  JD was a really good player and I will always remember a little fade that he had to his shot that made him really tough to guard. The guy was a real warrior on the court, and I remember many encounters both with and against him that served to cement our friendship strongly. He certainly wasn’t the best player I played with, but he was certainly one of the tougher. If the modern plus /minus analytics could have been magically measured at that time, I’m pretty sure his would have been quite good.  A great competitor… Little did I realize at the time; I truly had no idea just how lion-hearted the guy would prove to be.

For whatever reason, and I cannot tell you exactly when this began (though it was early in our high school experience), myself and two of my closest friends decided to try our hand at surfing. Rich, the transplant from New York (7th grade) and Ray (family home near the ocean in Del Mar) were my partners in crime for this venture (and countless others), and I must say we had a lot of fun in the process. Both Rich and Ray were far more serious about it than myself, yet I do recall that we were all pretty determined to figure it out. I still remember the yellow “rounded pin” board that I inherited from someone I knew who was a really good surfer and had outgrown this rather pedestrian style and had moved on to a “tri-fin swallow tail.” I was happy to have it. From the beginning it was an exercise in humility. We started out by learning to wax our boards and then soon moved on to riding the white water near shore. Sometime thereafter we graduated to attempting to ride puny waves. “Attempt” is the perfect word as it was really difficult. I remember marveling as I watched some of my “old hand” friends make it look so easy. To this day, there are few things I enjoy more than watching talented surfers do their thing. Eventually we graduated to the “inside” nearer to shore and moved to the “outside” where the actual surfers do their thing. Needless to say, a trio of beginners heading out to the real waves is not exactly the fondest desire of the skilled surfers, yet I never felt any noticeable animosity. I must say it was both exhilarating and terrifying, but I also must say one thing really held me back. It dawned on me rather quickly that this surfing thing was really dangerous and that I was clearly a danger to not only myself but those around me as well. Many a time I remember hesitating  on larger days when, with one or two more determined strokes I could have caught the wave, at which point the odds were extremely high that I would proceed to fall and/or “pearl” (a spectacular headfirst wipeout in surfing parlance). And let me tell you, that water could really toss you around like a rag doll. It was a powerful force which often made mincemeat of me both physically and emotionally. I had a healthy dose of what I would like to call “pragmatic fear.” For someone who hasn’t experienced the sheer power of waves it is almost impossible to describe. Seeing it from the shore and experiencing it from where the waves are breaking on a moderately large day, is like seeing the same movie, one in an Omni Max Theater with 3D glasses and the other on a small circa 1975 black and white television with rabbit ear antennas. Mercifully, my career was short though I have continued to love being in the ocean and have become a strong swimmer. Interestingly, my good friend Ray still surfs and has become quite good despite his many attempts to tell us that he isn’t. We all know that he is being modest.  

Back to JD… Around this approximate time, JD realizes that he would also like to learn to surf and he begins the aforementioned painful process. I remember watching him a few times and I was astonished by how terrible he was, and also by the horrific wipeouts he was willing to endure. JD seemed to be completely devoid of even a dose of “pragmatic fear.” I thoroughly enjoyed watching him as it was darn funny to witness his spectacular and truth be told, dangerous wipeouts. Never seemed to faze him; he was having the time of his life. In retrospect, it now reminds me a little of a Rocky Balboa fight. The more punishment and abuse he took, the more he seemed to thrive. It made no sense. Not quite sure how he didn’t drown.

At about this same time, JD in keeping with the interesting side that I mentioned earlier, gets his first job at a cash station pumping gas. Now remember that JD was quite fond of marijuana “consumption” and that he had an older brother that was everything that JD wasn’t. Quite frankly, he seemed to be a bit of a bad seed who would eventually run into some real trouble as a result of his prolific drug usage and transacting. I believe he spent some time in jail and I am a little unsure as to how JD escaped a similar fate.

I remember seeing JD at my house for a basketball game and he tells me that he has quit his job at the gas station after receiving his first meager paycheck. Soon after that, it would be not uncommon to see JD with his pockets stuffed with cash looking like he had just rolled out of bed. He always looked a little unkempt so that was not terribly unusual, yet the added feature of cash wads, added a comical air to the new optics. JD was selling marijuana and who knows what else with his older brother. Something tells me; this probably wasn’t the first time. Also, around this same timeframe, JD noticed that I played a lot of tennis. Remember our house had a tennis court. So, one day while at my house with a couple of friends, he asked me if I would like to play a set. Possibly we were hanging around the pool or perhaps he just stopped by unexpectedly. I mention this because he was barefoot. I remember looking at him thinking he was nuts. I had played a lot of tennis in my life and he had no shoes or a racquet. I knew JD was a little crazy, but what was he thinking? I dismissed it and yet he persisted. He mentioned that he had played a little bit over the years though he didn’t even own a racquet. Finally, I relented and agreed to play a set with him, expecting to wipe the court with him. Instead I ended up having to work really hard to beat him 6-3 (barefoot and using a borrowed racquet!) Classic JD I must say… Flash forward several years, and he was routinely beating me, and it drove me nuts at the time. I can still see him unloading his pockets of crumbled cash, often losing some of it as he headed down the glassy slope to the court before our match. I would pick it up and point it out as he often seemed oblivious to it. I look back on it now and smile though at the time I still couldn’t believe that this relatively inexperienced player had gotten so good. At least he now wore shoes!!!

JD and I continued to become good friends and despite that fact, as so often happens in life, we ended up eventually heading our separate ways and sort of lost contact with one another. I ended up in Santa Barbara to study History and JD headed to Humboldt State to study Accounting (yes you read that right). I definitely thought of JD, but I certainly did not see or hear from him.

Several years later I remember bumping into a mutual friend who had also gone to HSU, and he told me a story of a day in Humboldt when huge waves pumped into the area. This is not a terribly unusual thing as big surf is common in the area (just north of Santa Cruz). This was not your average big surf day; this was a day that brought in monster waves from some type of El Nino event. He described how people crowded the best vantage points watching as a mere three extremely brave and crazy surfers ventured out to take on the huge walls of water. And, yes, you guessed it, one of the three was none other than JD. According to the story, JD held his own and managed to ride these towering waves with great skill! From knowing the guy, I would have expected nothing less. And, it really made me proud as JD was a special dude among many special people I have known during my life.

Years later, after marriage and kids for both of us, I ran into JD though I do not recall the circumstances. The only reason I remember it at all has to do with the fact that he had become a high-level auditor for the IRS!!! You gotta love the irony. I wonder if he ended up claiming any of the cash transactions that were such a large part of his early employment history? Doing a little extra research via the magical world of the internet, I learned that JD went on to get a master’s degree, and that after 25 years of government work that included contract accounting, auditing, consulting, and training, he started his own CPA firm.

 Life would in fact be far less interesting without the presence of a JD type in everyone’s life. Most of us observe from a safe distance (both literally and figuratively) and marvel at the extreme contrast with which these precious few live their lives. Secretly, I believe most us wish we had a little of what people like JD seem to have in abundance. The Jewish word chutzpah comes relatively close to describing these traits, yet I do not feel as though it quite captures the essence. For me and my relatively simple mind, I feel it is the perfect blend of crazy and determined. Or said another way, perhaps simply crazily determined…      

Thomas M. Cook

2/1/20     

Who Needs Fantastical Fiction?!?!

Several years ago, I remember hearing a quote from the actor / humorist Alan Alda that went something like this, “I vastly prefer reading nonfiction over fiction because fiction always seems so fictitious.” I unsuccessfully attempted to locate Alda’s Twainian quote for the purposes of this writing (my paraphrasing will unfortunately have to do). I do believe this sentiment captures perfectly a strong bias I have espoused for as long as I can remember. Impatiently enduring coming attractions previews at movie theaters in recent years, I am always utterly stunned and bewildered by the fantastical tales of space aliens, transformers, superheroes, and the like that seem to explode off the screen in a loud cacophony of supernatural, often computer-generated, fabrication. I suppose, our often hum-drum lives demand, and in fact yearn, for the type of escapism that these films provide, a welcome respite from everyday life. I have always felt that great real stories / plausible stories, which exist in abundance, are vastly superior to the banal ridiculousness of fantastical, over the top, often gratuitously violent, make-believe. As a kid I remember reading the Lord of The Rings series (never saw any of the movies) and although I will readily admit that I did enjoy the books, the reading was farcical in a tedious way far too often; I usually found myself reverting back to nonfiction and historical fiction which seems to hold my attention much better. I do realize that I am representative of a small minority in the year 2020 and quite frankly, I find this quite disappointing. The inspiration for this writing comes from two semi-recent events. They are, quite honestly, two of the best stories I have ever heard, and though they are very different, they are also connected by the sheer audacity of the respective occurrences. No cyborgs or levitating super- humans are necessary as both stories stand on the merit of everyday possibility. Sort of…

Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, and Dave were simply five very regular twenty-something guys (all graduates of Palos Verdes High School) out on the town for their First Annual Five Dave’s reunion dinner in mid-January of 1987. I suppose I could stop there as this is pretty good already, but the story gets fabulously better from here. The five friends apparently started at the home of one of the Dave’s in the truly beautiful environs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, an absolute oasis and sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of urban Los Angeles, just a stone’s throw from the I-405 Freeway and a veritable sea of cars and people. As a college student, I traveled near, and occasionally through the area, as I periodically journeyed from college in Santa Barbara and home in San Diego. The unofficial ringleader of the group was Dave Mulligan (24), who had recently lost his father at age 55 from a tragic, sudden heart attack. Dave M had always been a little, shall we say, unpredictable. The sudden and unexpected death of his father, who had been a comedy writer for shows such as “Rowan and Martins Laugh in” and “M*A*S*H”, seems to have accelerated this tendency.

After dinner, the Five Dave’s ultimately made it to Hennessey’s Tavern, a popular bar in Redondo Beach. They were nattily attired for the occasion, replete with penny loafers and ties. Remember this was 1987 and they were wealthy kids from Southern California, this was the style for wealthy L.A. kids at that time. After an evening of drinking, Mulligan comes up with the idea of sneaking into Marineland in Palos Verdes to “pet the whales,” something they had apparently done on previous occasions while high school students. This strikes a bit of chord with me as I once snuck into the original SeaWorld in San Diego while a high school student. Our plan was to simply get in without paying, pretty pedestrian in relation to what the evening would hold for Dave Mulligan and friends. First a brief history lesson on Marineland…

Marineland or Hanna Barbera’s Marineland Park as it was known for much of the 1970’s and early 1980’s opened in 1954, which was amazingly one year BEFORE Disneyland and ten years BEFORE SeaWorld. It was designed by the same guy that master-minded Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). In its day, Marineland was a place like no other and included an exhibit in which guests could swim with fish and docile sharks. And, it had a killer whale show that predated SeaWorld’s iconic events. These days one would simply attach a device around their head and experience it through the “joys” of “virtual reality.” Call me old fashioned, but the reality-reality version sounds much better to me; it was, unsurprisingly, an enormously popular destination.  SeaWorld would ultimately purchase Marineland in late 1986 and then abruptly shut down the facility in 1987 shortly after The Five Dave Encounter, though there is no apparent correlation. Interestingly, the property would remain abandoned for 20 years. Have I piqued your interest yet?

Back to the early morning hours of January 14, 1987… After hiking down the cliffs surrounding the park and scaling a fence at the southern end of the park at approximately 2:00 a.m., the Five Dave’s find their way to the killer whale tank and amphitheater with the intention of simply “petting the whales” as they had discussed at Hennessey’s. And then things got really crazy… Not content to simply be at the tank, Mulligan decides to climb down the ladder that leads to the platform used by the professional performers / whale trainers for the public shows. As if on cue, its two aquatic inhabitants breach the platform, seemingly happy about the appearance of visitors.

Fairly important to remind the reader that this tank is the home Orky and Corky. In spite of the cute, cuddly names, and apparent friendly behavior, they are highly intelligent, apex predators, easily comparable to African lions in regard to their place on the marine life food chain. In short, they know no predators, and in fact, most everything to them is potential prey. They have been known to even occasionally take on Great White Sharks and dispatch them with relative ease. Hunting in groups, these magnificent mammals have been called “the wolves of the sea.” Fully grown adult males can be 25ft long and weigh close to six tons or twelve thousand pounds!!! Orcas are the fastest of all marine mammals and have been clocked at speeds near 35 MPH! Head-butting and a powerful slap from a dorsal fin are often used hunting techniques utilized to immobilize prey before feeding… Finally, equipped with strong, sharp, interlocking teeth (four inches long and one inch wide) and powerful jaws designed to hold their prey in place, orcas are the incredibly efficient, alpha killing machines of the world’s oceans. And though there are no known human fatalities from orcas in the wild, there have been a number of fatalities attributed to captive killer whales in recent years. Wild animals do unpredictable things in even the best of settings.  

I’m guessing that none of the Dave’s knew any of these details as to the habits of the oversized puppies with which they were about to commune. At this point, on the platform, three of the Five Dave’s get cold feet. Dave Mulligan soon makes a decision that not one in a million sane people would make. He decides to jump on the back of one of the orcas in the hopes that it would take off and give him a ride. Despite the fact that there are so many things that could have, and probably should have gone wrong, the whale takes off with Dave Mulligan, fully clothed (tie and loafers), hanging on to the upper dorsal fin. Inexplicably, Dave Berg, who is initially incredulous as to the events unfolding before his eyes, decides to employ the same strategy and soon both men are alternately surfing upon and swimming with the killer whales. The term “Don’t Try This At Home” was created for something exactly like this. Eventually, while having the time of their lives, they start to get quite noisy and they attract the attention of two security guards. Finally, with at least one gun drawn, they are pulled from the water, arrested and detained overnight in jail at the Lomita Sheriffs Office before being released the next day after being charged with MISDEMEANOR trespassing and a $350 fine. Running with the bulls in Pamplona is for sissies in comparison to this wacky rite of passage.

Some interesting footnotes to the events of January 14, 1987… As mentioned, Marineland which had been purchased by SeaWorld in 1986, inexplicably closed its doors about a month after the break-in. The local community was devastated as it had become a neighborhood favorite. Orky and Corky after the closure, would be clandestinely transported to SeaWorld San Diego in the middle of the night. Corky was renamed Shamu and Orky later died. As for Dave Mulligan, six months after his arrest, Mulligan left the country with little more than the shirt on his back and $600 cash to travel for a year. His adventures are chronicled in his book Mulligan’s Wake which covers the wild year after his father’s death.

Swimming and surfing on killer whales is most certainly an event that most likely cannot be topped or perhaps even matched. Well, lets give it a try.   On March 15th, 2015 something happened that to my knowledge, had never happened before, has not happened since, and is unlikely to ever happen again (just a hunch) though that might be a bit of a stretch. Never say never.

 Consider the many times you have boarded a plane in your life. If I had to guess, I would say it has most certainly been hundreds of times for myself. According to statistics that date back to 2017, the estimated number of annual commercial flights worldwide would approach 37 million and this would equate to more than 100,000 flights of a day. Staggering numbers… I would suggest that air travel has become a fairly commonplace occurrence for many people. I can tell you somewhat confidently that most of my flight experiences have been uneventful for the most part. I have been on flights that have had minor medical emergencies, strong turbulence, aborted landings, drunk passengers, loudly snoring passengers, minor mechanical issues which have delayed flights, and I have even witnessed the removal of passengers for issues that seemed pretty trivial to me at the time. And, I also must add the sense of disbelief I experience each and every time a large, extremely heavy object manages to become airborne and move through the sky. So, although air flight is at this point a fairly unremarkable thing, for me at least, it still retains a base remarkableness which will most likely never fade.

On March 15, 2015 all of the things which we thought we knew about the realties of mundane air travel suddenly and abruptly changed. You see, British Airway passengers and crew, on a scheduled 7-hour flight from London’s Heathrow Airport to Dubai international Airport in the United Arab Emirates, were unsuspecting as to the anonymous passenger than lurked among them. This was certainly not any normal passenger. This was an extraordinary passenger that unknowingly possessed the ability to change the course of the flight in midair with a simple yet extraordinary trip to the lavatory. This person created the stench heard round the world, as it became international news as its foulness implored the plane’s crew to reach a decision that only mechanical problems and medical emergencies had inspired previously. They aborted the flight and headed back to Heathrow with the urgency of a true “smell emergency.”

What we know… Luckily (not for him) a local British politician happened to be on board and from him we learn several important facts. The pilot made a carefully worded announcement that they were in fact returning to Heathrow. He was careful, according to Abhishek Sachdev to make it clear to the passengers that there was no mechanical issue. Moreover, he made it clear for all (I doubt they needed any clarification at this point), that the issue was “liquid fecal excrement.” According to Sachdev these are exact words the pilot chose. Let that really sink in. Another fantastic part of the story is that British Airways later “apologized for any inconvenience this may have caused’ as the flight returned to London and was rescheduled for the following day (15 hours later). I realize the term Toxic Shock Syndrome is already taken, yet, this for me, was the ultimate TSS for these passengers and crew. Can you even begin to imagine how ghastly this smell must have been that a closed lavatory door proved to be no barrier and that it permeated the cabin to a degree that it elevated far beyond the scope of a terrible inconvenience. It became a possible health issue as articulated to the BBC by a British Airway spokesperson known only as “Sarah.” When you’re up at that altitude the cabin has to be pressurized so the problem is that anything like that is actually a health and safety problem because only 50 percent of the air is being recycled and cleaned.” Good to know! Actually, I would rather not know this, truth be told.  

What we don’t know… To this day, we still do not know the identity of the Pooper Like No Other. We also do not know whether it was a man or woman (though I can pretty confidently surmise that is was a man). People on the flight would obviously know the “who” but seemingly the name identity remains a closely kept secret. Perhaps scientists are studying this person with the hopes of developing a “nonnuclear nuclear” weapon. I can virtually guarantee that a name change, hair dye, and dark glasses are strong possibilities for this person. Be that as it may, none of this changes the fact that this unnamed person singlehandedly changed the course of a flight in midair by the “power” of an organically produced odor that is at the least generically familiar to each and every one of us. Nothing more, nothing less…That is an amazing “accomplishment” that stands alone in the history of commercial aviation as far as I know.

These two true stories are for me, really good examples of the truly amazing which often times gets lost in the rabid fascination with the fantastical and the improbable. For me, riding a killer whale with no training or knowledge as to the behavior and habits of these spectacular apex marine predators and the story behind the ability of an everyday person to have an amazing infamous place in commercial aviation history is the stuff of legend. Legends that actually happen are the kinds of legends that resonate with me. You can have your Star Wars, Spiderman, Avengers, Fast and Furious, and the like, give me The Dave Mulligan Five and the anonymous Pooper to assuage and nourish the yearnings of my imagination and the escapism that we all need from time to time.  

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-01-13-mn-4381-story.html

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nz5q7m/questions-that-still-need-answering-two-years-on-from-the-poo-plane

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/british-airways-flight-smelly-poo_n_6878676

Thomas M. Cook

1/5/20